The problem with Wake Forest history is that the only real history, Dr. George Washington Paschal’s three-volume History of Wake Forest College: 1834-1943, only mentions the town as it affects the college. There are references to Forestville and Wake Forest in Elizabeth Reid Murray’s Wake: Capital County of North Carolina; Volume I – Prehistory through Centennial, and she had at least a dozen Wake Forest sources in addition to her meticulous research. But all that does not tell us a lot how things happened.
In 1874 the college trustees succeeded in moving the train depot from Forestville to a spot on the west side of the tracks and north of the road called the Rolesville road at the time, later Wait Avenue. It was also happily in front of the James S. Purefoy house, which allowed a later college president, Dr. William Poteat, to watch and have conversations with the college students who went to the depot to see the trains and any pretty girl passengers. Today the house is used as offices for the Wake Forest Baptist Church.
In the Forestville left behind, there was one school, the Forestville Female Academy built around 1850 by James Purefoy and Peyton Dunn. It was housed in a two-story building with an outside staircase on what is now called Liberty Street, across the street from the current rental houses, and still stood up until 1920 or so. And just south of Forestville there was the Pleasant Grove Academy just across Powell Road from the elegant Jesse Powell house that still stands. The academy had 35 students in 1840.
By 1874 Forestville could boast of a hotel, a milliner for the hats all women wore, six general stores, someone selling liquor (local stills?), a shoemaker, a Masonic lodge, at least eight mills nearby grinding corn and flour, and the Dunn foundry housed in several old railroad houses.
One of the stores had to be the two-story building at the intersection of the Powell Road from the Neuse River (where Jesse Powell also built a bridge about 1820) and Forestville Road running east to somewhere near Riley Hill and west to Falls. It was first the John R. Dunn store and later was purchased by James L. Phillips. (Much of the Forestville information is from Vivian Branson, James Phillips’ daughter.) That store stood where a florist now operates out of a small building that once was a store and filling station owned by Etta and Reynold Jones.
Branson also recorded that there was an old store building kitty-corner across from what is now Hoy Auction and in that building was a printing press, perhaps the first in Wake County. Branson’s daughter, who was a librarian at the Duke Library, found a book printed in that building and written by Nicholas Purefoy, one of the three sons of John Purefoy. It had to do with the then-current controversy over foot-washing.
Forestville also had a Baptist church built in 1860. There were other Baptist congregations locally which had no church building of their own. Wake Union Church was used in rotation by the Episcopal, Baptist, Methodist and Presbyterian congregations, and Wake Forest Baptist Church was largely a student congregation and had no permanent building until 1914. You have to think that the local plantation owners and the college faculty would have been pleased to take their carriages to Forestville to church on a Sunday.
The controversy over moving the train depot was the cause of the Rev. Brooks leaving Forestville Baptist Church where he had been pastor since it was built. I cannot remember if he was for or against the move.
Meanwhile, up in Wake Forest it seems very likely that the owners of property to the east of the railroad would have had a lot of prior knowledge about the move of the depot and would have begun planning how they could make money from the move.
Town historians agree that people began platting store lots and even house lots – Ruby Reid’s parents built a fine house on South White Street during this period – and as soon as the depot was moved, W.B. Dunn also moved his foundry to Wake Forest – again made of wood – because he needed the depot to ship his plows and other agricultural implements.
We have no record of these early stores because they were burned and rebuilt with brick. But we do know that in 1898, when Dr. John Benjamin Powers and T.E. Holding broke up their partnership in a pharmacy, Holding opened his own pharmacy in a wooden building where Unwined now stands on South White Street. Holding’s two-story building was a twin of the J.B. Brewer general store next door and both buildings had medical offices upstairs. Those buildings stood until they were destroyed in a fire in 1925; we know about them because there is a picture.
Dr. Powers built against the tide in 1898 when he finished the large two-story brick building next to his Italianate house and facing Faculty Avenue. It was a general store, a law fraternity building, the much loved Corner Ice Cream Parlor operated by Kathaleen Chandley and is now an event space. In 1898 Faculty Avenue was still a dead-end street because of the steep bluff at its northern end.
There were two significant events in 1879 and 1880. In that first year, 1879, Forestville incorporated itself as a town with a charter from the General Assembly. The new Town of Forestville had 116 residents and its area was a square a quarter-mile in each direction from John R. Dunn’s store. There is information that the charter was repealed in 1885 – without information about the cause – and then was re-chartered in 1899 and remained a town until 1915.
The Town of Wake Forest College was chartered in 1880 and was indeed a town governed by the college. The first mayor was James S. Purefoy, a Baptist minister, a college trustee who had sequestered some college funds by refusing to invest them in Confederate bonds and the person paying the most town taxes because of the property he owned. The town as chartered was a rectangle, running a mile and a half from north to south and a mile east to west. The boundaries of the town did not change until the later half of the 1900s. You can find the old boundaries by looking at the curbs on old streets which were made of granite blocks and have, as much as possible, been preserved. The town had about 650 residents.
The minute books for that town, feared lost, have been found and are in the Wake Forest Historical Museum. I hope to return soon to translating the handwriting so as to provide another facet of the early town.
In 1885 Chas. Emerson’s North Carolina Tobacco Belt Directory listed the names and occupations of people in Wake Forest. Forestville, Falls, New Light and Pernell (sic.).
In Wake Forest, they were Edwin Allen, general merchandise; R.L. Brewer, postmaster; W.C. Brewer, justice of the peace and member of the school board; J.C. Caddell, teacher in a public school; James Cook, shoemaker; Mrs. M.S. Dickson, owner of Dickson’s Hotel; W.B. Dunn, foundry; Dr. W.H. Edwards, dentist and minister; Jesse Harris, blacksmith; Henry Holden, cotton gin; Johnson & Purefoy, general merchandise; Dr. W.C. Lankford, physician and druggist; Alex Mitchell, teacher in a free school; Thomas Pender, shoemaker; W.C. Powell & Co., general merchandise; J.B. Powers, physician; Frederick M. Purefoy, general merchandise; Marion Purefoy, general merchandise; Jesse Ratley, shoemaker; C.F. Reid, life/fire insurance agent, freight and express agent; Rev. William Royall, Baptist minister; Rev. W.B. Royall, Baptist minister; W. G. Simmons, signal service and fire insurance agent; Smith & Long, sawmill, grist mills, cotton gin; C.F. Taylor, president of Wake Forest College; Timberlake & Watson, general merchandise; Rev. R.T. Vann, pastor, Baptist church; Mrs. Addison Purefoy, teacher at Wake Forest Female School; W.L. Poteat, editor Wake Forest Student; Rev. J.L. White, Baptist minister; W.G. Wingate & Co., general merchandise; and C.L. Winston, barber and snack house.
Those general stores were on what would become – or perhaps already was – White Street and other streets along with the hotel and the shoemakers. Did you recognize some familiar names?
In Forestville, D.W. Allen was postmaster and owned a general store; Dr. Leroy Chappell was a physician; J.R. Dunn & Son owned a general store; L.C. Dunn owned a steam cotton gin; D.F. Fort owned a general store, a carpenter and blacksmith shop and a steam cotton gin; Dr. H.H. Harris was a physician and lived in an elegant house; H.T. Jones owned a steam cotton gin; J.W. Jones owned a steam cotton gin; E.M. Keith owned a general store; J.C. Leigh owned an estate (?) and a grist mill; J.F. Sanderford was a station agent; and W.B. Smith owned a steam cotton gin.
Only three stores were left in Forestville.
At Falls, W.O. Allen was postmaster and owned a general store; Allen & Holliday owned a steam saw mill and cotton gin; W.F. Askew was the owner of Falls of Neuse paper mills; and W.H. Ray owned a saloon.
Up in New Light, H.R. Chappell owned a saloon; J.M. Hockaday owned a saw mill and a grist mill; L. Jackson owned a general store at New Light and Roger’s Store; A.B. Lassiter owned a steam saw mill; W.H. Lassiter was the postmaster; W.K.W. Mangum owned a saloon; J. Norwood owned a steam saw mill, steam grist mill and steam cotton gin; N. Rogers owned a saloon; Mrs. F.G. Ward owned a general store; and L. Woodlief owned a steam saw mill, steam grist mill and steam cotton gin.
The H.R. Chappell who owned a saloon was probably a cousin or other close relative of Dr. Leroy Chappell in Forestville because the latter grew up in Granville County near Wake. A Chappell cemetery is still preserved on the west side of Falls of Neuse Road on the grounds of St. Raphael Catholic Church and is surrounded by a white picket fence.
In Pernell, A.J. Davis owned a general store; S.H. Davis owned a grist mill and a cotton gin; A. Mangum owned a blacksmith shop; W. Smith owned a saw mill, a grist mill and a cotton gin; and J.H. Wiggs owned a saw mill and a cotton gin.
Cotton was king, saloons were popular and Wake Forest banned liquor of any kind inside town and within a mile outside in the town charter.
(Yes, we are going around Robin Hood’s barn to get to directions to downtown, but it is the scenic route. Maybe next week.)
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